Beer of the Bass

[url="http://www.hatsandcaps.co.uk/Borsalino-Beaver-Fur-Fedora-P130305/"]http://www.hatsandcaps.co.uk/Borsalino-Beaver-Fur-Fedora-P130305/[/url] £356 for a hat? Definitely too expensive.

I've got a set of the stick-on fake inlays on a bass, and I find them fairly unconvincing. I can see the edges clearly, and the pearloid pattern looks like a low resolution print. They do look good from a few feet away though. Mine were from a Japanese supplier, whose name I can't remember, so I can't comment on whether others are better.

I've got a set of Orla bass pedals, which came with a keyboard that got trashed by a courier. Rather than binning them, I thought I'd see if anyone can use them. There are two pedals broken off, one of which is missing. I think Orla still make these, so you might be able to get spares from them, or cobble something together. They are wired to a multi-pin socket, but doing a MIDI retrofit wouldn't be too difficult. They can be picked up from me in Edinburgh, or if you want to arrange a courier to collect them, I'll wrap them in cardboard for you. Prog on a shoestring! Now GONE! [attachment=99014:Orla 003.JPG][attachment=99015:Orla 004.JPG]

Looks well thought out! I'm curious about the tone stack - is it based on a James/Baxandall type or something else?

[quote name='Ancient Mariner' timestamp='1326106970' post='1492248'] Just before Christmas I bought a fretless 5 string yamaha from Brian (Blademan) here, as a Christmas present to me. Did a little fettling, popped a set of flatwounds on (well, top 4 strings anyway - need to find a flatwound and practiced a bit. [/quote] If you're still looking for a flatwound low B, there was an eBay seller selling old stock D'addarios cheaply. I had one off them a couple of weeks ago; [url="http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/DAddario-Flatwound-CB132-Single-132-Bass-String-/200642847011?pt=UK_Guitar_Accessories&hash=item2eb73ee123"]http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/DAddario-Flatwound-CB132-Single-132-Bass-String-/200642847011?pt=UK_Guitar_Accessories&hash=item2eb73ee123[/url] I thought it was worth a mention, as they're cheaper than many places. Oddly enough, I played mostly fretless for my first 5 years of electric bass as my first fretted bass broke, but I rarely get the urge these days as I'm playing double bass or fretted electric instead.

I think the knackered guitar cabs make a big difference! I played a gig last year where the house "bass" rig was a horrible Carlsbro Stingray through a tired old Park 4x12", and I was struck by how Stranglers-y it sounded when I used a pick. The speaker breakup sounds a bit different to amp distortion. I can't imagine wanting to nail that sound all the time though, unless it really suited your band.

I don't think many people are getting rich building high-end instruments. My brother is a luthier, building classical guitars at 3k to 3.5k a time. The business is ticking over nicely, but he doesn't have a particularly lavish lifestyle and probably works longer and takes home less than your average skilled worker. While there are fewer man-hours in most electric basses, I suspect the smaller bass outfits operate in a similar way. I think we're just not used to paying developed-country wages for manufactured goods any more.

I usually use my 1x12" Princeton Reverb copy for guitar gigs, but today I played through an old silverface Twin Reverb in a rehearsal room, and was enjoying the "big amp" sound even though I wasn't playing louder than usual. It'd be interesting to figure out why that was pleasing (given that the two are voiced similarly), though maybe it's a psychological thing. I've never quite seen the point of a 4x12" cab these days - a guy I know drags a JTM45 and a 4x12" around but has to use a powerbrake all the time as it's ridiculously loud otherwise. If I were him, I'd probably have gone for a smaller, less efficient cab!

That eBay kit is also sans transformers, which makes it not such good value as it may appear, as they're the most expensive parts.

I think it's the scientist in me; whenever I see a "graph" with no scale, I tend to ignore whatever I'm being sold. The strings actually might be OK, but their marketing seriously underestimates the intelligence of the viewers.

I am impressed by the level of marketing bullshit and pseudo-science twaddle in the first video!

Cobalt is also in Alnico magnets, which most of us will have in our pickups.

I've got an old Teisco vibrato on my guitar, which works a bit like a Bigsby, but is even more crudely designed. With a roller bridge and a bit of attention to the nut slots (namely smoothing the slots and using a bit of graphite), I can honestly say it doesn't give me any tuning problems unless I go into the aforementioned full whole-tone wang mode for extended periods. I find the long arm travel but smaller range of this style of vibrato tailpiece makes it much easier to get a smooth, even vibrato than with a Fender or Floyd. It is definately less touchy than a floating trem when string bending etc. I'd say go for it, and you'll probably find yourself using the Bigsby more than you expected.

If you're using overdrives which sound good through your amp but harsh through DI, it's probably the high end roll-off of your cab that makes them sound palatable, rather than the amp itself. Many quality DI boxes have a 40dB pad which can be used with amp outputs (in parallel with a speaker), but you'd need something to simulate the frequency response of your cab. I think the guitar cab simulators all cut the low end, which I doubt you'd want. Peavey make a speaker level DI with a variable Hi Cut control, which could be worth a look - It's called the SDI. There's probably not much point in messing with speaker level DI if you're using a solid-state amp though, as the tone before and after the power amp would not be much different, and many players using overdrive prefer to mic the cab.

Changing the value of the cap would alter where the bass roll-off on the bridge pickup starts. I'm not sure how much useful variation different caps would provide - some experimentation would be needed.

It's kind of Ric-flavoured, but that's as far as it goes, as they're otherwise very different basses. It does provide a good snarly pick sound which is quite different from the usual mid-scooped blend sounds on a jazz though. i don't have a diagram, but it should be fairly simple to work out - the cap goes in line with the hot wire from the bridge pickup, using the switch to short across the cap in the "down" position.

The B7 is longer than the space behind the bridge on a tele! There is a photograph here; [url="http://www.tdpri.com/forum/tele-technical/122010-bigsby-b7-tele.html"]http://www.tdpri.com/forum/tele-technical/122010-bigsby-b7-tele.htm[/url][url="http://www.tdpri.com/forum/tele-technical/122010-bigsby-b7-tele.html"]l[/url] I hope you haven't ordered one yet!

Once I've got some daylight, I might have to take a picture of my flute. It's a one-key Clementi, from somewhere between 1802 and 1830, which I found in a secondhand shop for £20. My flute playing is not up to much, but it's a great sounding instrument, although hard to play in tune.

I've just tried something different with my bass wiring, and I thought I'd start a thread about it. I have a home built 5-string with Jazz pickups. When I put the bass together, I used a push-pull pot to switch the pickups between series and parallel, but found I didn't like the series sound much and never used it. I've just tried re-wiring the switch to put a 4.7nF cap in series with the bridge pickup, like the Rickenbacker "Vintage Tone Control". This cuts all of the bass and most of the mids from the bridge pickup, which is nearly unusable with the bridge pickup soloed, but does really interesting things when blending the pickups. I can run the neck pickup on 10, and as I bring up the bridge pickup, it seems to add extra highs without scooping the low-mids as much as the usual setup. With both controls on 10, it gets really bright and clanky but not thinned out in the mids. It opens up some useful sounds, especially for pick playing, and I like it better than the series/parallel switching. Has anyone else experimented with this? Obviously, anyone with a 4003 will be familiar with the idea, but it was interesting to hear the results on a very different bass.

I can't imagine it harming anything, especially with a solid state amp. I think reverb pans are designed to be used a particular way up though, as one of the letters in the Accutronics parts numbers is for orientation. So your reverb might not behave as it's meant to.

[attachment=96569:101_0365_edited.jpg] Here's my favourite; it's a 1936 Kalamazoo KG21 archtop. Kalamazoo were a budget line made by Gibson during the depression when few people could afford the fancier models. It's very plain, but made from good spruce and mahogany, and I'd never have had the money for an actual 30's Gibson. It has the biggest v-neck I've ever played, so much so that it took me ages to find a capo to fit! I've got 13 gauge strings on and it sounds great, quite strident and midrangey. I've also got a beautiful little parlour guitar built by my brother Pete Beer and an oddball Kay LP synth electric, but I don't have decent pictures of those just now...

A lot of players seem to use the 1,2,4 Simandl fingering lower down, but change to one finger per semitone further up the neck where the span fits the hand better. Given that you're playing a half size bass, you might make that change at a lower position than most, but it's still going to be worth using 1,2,4 in the lower couple of positions for better intonation and less fatigue. Mind you, I use Simandl type fingering at the low end of my bass guitar too.

I'd agree, that sounds like a valve gone microphonic.

A four string P-bass neck will handle 5 strings if you're happy with narrow spacing; see the bottom of this guy's web page. [url="http://www.3dentourage.com/425/425.htm"]http://www.3dentourage.com/425/425.htm[/url] I'd do it with a replacement neck though, and I wonder how the A-string would sound going over both pickup halves.

One other thing worth a look; a lot of old valve amps have unused taps on the output transformer, so there might even be a 7.5ohm tap which could just be wired up to a socket. It might be worth either you or a tech checking it out to see if this is the case here.